While a three-pin plug is ideal for charging your phone battery, an electric car’s battery is much bigger and, unsurprisingly, requires a lot more power. A regular plug can indeed charge your EV, but it’ll take a very, very long time to do so.
A typical household socket delivers electricity at a rate of around 2.3kW. At this speed it’d take over 24 hours to charge an entry-level Tesla Model Y RWD’s battery from 0 to 100 per cent, which is far from practical. Because of this, some car manufacturers don’t recommend using a three-pin plug, even when a suitable cable is included with the EV. They see three-pin charging as an emergency measure for when there is absolutely no other choice.
The alternative and far more convenient option is having a home wallbox charger installed. This is a unit that is specifically designed for charging electric vehicles, and it delivers almost three times as much power as a regular domestic plug socket. You will need to arrange for a wallbox to be fitted by a specialist installer, but there are many suppliers to choose from with home installation services covering the entire country.
Once fitted, a modern 7kW home wallbox charger unit will fully charge the same Model Y in around eight-and-a-half hours, which is easily achievable if you plug it in overnight. This means you can wake up to a full ‘tank’ every morning, without having to drive anywhere to fill up. There will be some domestic properties with an 11kW ‘three-phase’ power supply that will allow a wallbox to charge a car even faster, but this is most common at commercial properties.
EV home charging time examples
Examples of charging times for popular EVs when plugged in at home.
| Battery Size | 3-pin plug (2.3kW) | Wallbox (7kW) | |
| Audi Q4 e-tron 45 | 77kWh | 33 hours 29 mins | 11 hours |
| BMW iX3 50 xDrive | 109kWh | 47 hours 23 minutes | 15 hours 34 minutes |
| Fiat Grande Panda | 44kWh | 19 hours 8 minutes | 6 hours 17 minutes |
| Renault 5 Comfort Range | 52kWh | 22 hours 37 minutes | 7 hours 26 minutes |
| Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive | 60kWh | 26 hours 5 minutes | 8 hours 34 minutes |
These shorter charging times made possible by a wallbox charger make a 200-mile round-trip commute feasible in a modern electric car, and it will cost significantly less in electricity than it would to buy fuel for a petrol or diesel model.
How much does home EV charging cost?
The cost of charging your electric car at home is ultimately defined by your domestic electricity rate. This can vary wildly from household to household and from supplier to supplier. However, you can ultimately calculate the cost of charging by multiplying the price of electricity by the amount of energy dispensed.
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